At the present moment, humanity only has access to one Earth-like, overheating planet. So the sample size is 1, we will have to make do with that.

Doesn't sound very reassuring.

How big a sample do you need vs how much time we have to assess the details.

Isn't it true the earth went through a number of ice ages in its history, the last one occurring about 10,000 years ago? Wouldn't a global warming take the earth out of each of its ice ages? Assuming we're going through a global warming now, what makes it so different? (this one is being blamed on greenhouse gases). So I'm skeptical.

How big a sample do you need vs how much time we have to assess the details.

Isn't it true the earth went through a number of ice ages in its history, the last one occurring about 10,000 years ago? Wouldn't a global warming take the earth out of each of its ice ages? Assuming we're going through a global warming now, what makes it so different? (this one is being blamed on greenhouse gases). So I'm skeptical.

Why is it far fetched to see humans as agents of change in the biosphere? It's not unprecedented. Blue green algae were heavily implicated in the Permian extinction event or The Great Dying, the worst of them all, killing around 90% of species. It is also known as The Great Oxygenation Event because the photosynthesis of blue green algae flooded the Earth's atmosphere with oxygen, making complex life on Earth possible.

So, if the blue-green algae can act as agents of change in the biosphere, why not humans? Are humans less powerful and impactful on the Earth than tiny, simple algae? We seem to have made quite a mark on the Earth's surface in a very short time in evolutionary time scales.

It's just physics, Phil. If you put enough carbon and water vapour in the atmosphere it must heat up. The amount of carbon humans have put into the atmosphere in a short time is enormously beyond the output of volcanoes and other "natural" sources over the same periods of time.

We humans may seem little but, as Archimedes noted, "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world". We humans are clever and have effectively leveraged our way to global domination, our only real competition now being microbial life. We have removed most of the world's forests and burn off many millions of years of rotted carcasses (oil) every day.

Make no mistake, humans are powerful agents of change in the biosphere, currently causing an extinction event. If blue-green algae can cause an extinction event by changing the atmosphere why would humans be incapable of it, especially given our unprecedented proliferation?

PE: I doubt you've seen any legit study that has ever contradicted global warming. That's why the National Academy of Sciences came out a number of years ago now, and publicly stated that global warming, due to people, is a fact as much as anything can be a fact within science. In fact, we know that all of the warming in recent decades is solely due to people, because every other factor would have cooled the planet.

If you are referring to some study that shows in a specific year no increase in temperature on land, did you also look at what those same studies show with respect to water temperature? Ocean water is the main absorber of the heat, and in years where land surface temperatures don't rise, we find the ocean water's temperature heating up faster than usual. I could see how some science-denying site would take such information out of context.

Nor'easter #3 is due to hit on Monday - Tuesday (which was originally forecasted for Friday - Saturday). The spaghetti models the forecasters rely on varies from channel to channel so the weather forecasts vary from channel to channel and from day to day. Science? Ha!

Weather forecasting is still unreliable. What makes me sadly laugh is that people will rely on them while avoid riding in driverless cars, which are far more reliable in terms of projected traffic fatalities.

Since global warming is far more complicated than weather forecasting, I don't see any legitimacy to it at all.
Even if the global temperature was stabilized to some desired level, what happens when the sea level rises anyway. And can we depend on scientists to adjust the sea level to some satisfactory level? What if they overshoot the mark?

Your turn.

PhilX

I'd say that to track CO2 levels and correlate these with temperature averages worldwide is definitely science. To "speculate" that various changes in the climate also are due to these CO2 levels seems also fair, at least just as much as String Theory.

However, I agree that the CO2 hypothesis for temperature change can be questioned. When we're speaking of small levels of temperature change of 0,8 degrees Celsius then it must be "allowed" to say that CO2 levels may not mean much at all.

There are also some Stratospheric "dynamics" of gases like N2O5 that may produce phenomenon that we may mistake for CO2 created instances in nature.

So we continue to describe and follow CO2 levels and other factors and in the end we may get it right. Science doesn't imply a correct answer. It is mostly the investigations, the studies of reality. See Scientific Programmes by Lakatos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Laka ... programmes.

The science on climate change is amazingly solid. Unfortunately, on the web there are numerous sites one can find that present a very distorted view of the evidence. One just needs to be extra careful that their source is in fact legit, and, if you do that, you'll see that human-caused climate change is real, and extremely dangerous for our survival. The theory that is used regarding climate change is the same theory that is used throughout astronomy to figure out the temperatures on other planets. In fact, Venus has a surface temperature hot enough to melt lead, not because of its distance from the Sun, but due instead to run-away greenhouse gas effects. In any event, it's not like the science behind climate change is something specially made up by scientists all over the globe, conspiring together, and also managing to get ice to melt to further the conspiracy. The science is real.

Necro: I just skimmed through that link. I would only add that as far as the risks go, that the site was a bit dated, and we now know, that every single climate-science model greatly underestimated the amount of ice melt. That undermines the claims regarding a conspiracy theory and also tells us that we shall be facing in decades issues that we formerly believed we would have centuries to deal with.

The reality is that the last time carbon levels were as high as they are now, ocean levels were significantly higher. I can't recall the exact figures, but it was many meters higher. This means that even if we stopped adding any more greenhouse gases, this instant, we are still screwed on the oceans rising. We are to the point that we need to not only stop adding greenhouse gases, but we need to take carbon out of the atmosphere. Yet, like a bunch of evolved social primates that are not used to dealing with such dangers, we are ignoring them.

Yeah, I don't think so, but let's just say the science 'is', for the sake of argument, solid.

We can conservatively, based on the conclusions of the science, expect a sea level rise of 200 feet or more, super hurricanes, the west coast made into a desert, etc.

Meh.

We're a clever buncha monkeys: we'll solve the problems or adapt to the problems.

What we won't do, shouldn't do, is hobble our industries (ourselves).

We won't do this, shouldn't do this, cuz, being the predatory cannibal apes we are, we look forward.

We absolutely hate goin' backwards.

We're exploiters, not harmonizers.

We enjoy the shade tree, but -- eventually -- turn it into baseball bats and tables and chairs and pianos.

We're awed by the mountain, but -- eventually -- crack it open for the gold, coal, uranium locked inside.

We're daunted by the ocean, but -- eventually -- set out onto it, dive down deep into it, to find out what's there and take it.

We crouch under the sky and space and feel small, but -- eventually -- we fling ourselves up and use these as well.

#

*Our evolution - We evolved and THRIVED on all range of extreme environments all over the Earth, from the infernal heat of Africa where everything is trying to KILL YOU! ALL THE TIME!, to the frigid apocalyptic wastelands of the North and the Ice Age where survival depended on constant invention and ingenuity.

Our history - Humans have been getting better at killing each other basically even before we made stone axes, and our progress in killing continues unceasingly. We also nearly went extinct once, BECAUSE A HUGE VOLCANO EXPLODED, reducing our overall population to about 5000 INDIVIDUALS, and of them ONLY 40 PAIRS were BREEDING ONES. Did that make us quit? NOPE. Only about 70000 years later we had 7,4 BILLION INDIVIDUALS, having 100 TIMES more biomass than any other large animal species in the history of our planet!!! That is a hell of a lot of breeding (which has also made us have a very low genetic variety almost making us inbred but not quite. BUT STILL)!

Our bodies - We're the ultimate Omnivores, we hunt down, kill, burn and eat absolutely anything until totally nothing is left, even more so than so-called "apex" predators like lions, bears, snakes and sharks (in fact, contrary to what Jaws may lead you to believe, we eat sharks so much, we're hunting them down to near extinction. Why? Simply because they make fancy soup). We also drink alcohol, one of the most volatile, flammable, caustic solvents in chemistry that is for all intents and purposes, POISON. It's the same toxic stuff used to exterminate bacteria, fungi and everything else biological, and a VX-like neurotoxin to invertebrates, arthropods and almost every other small animal. Why? Because it's FUN!

Our mind -The most terrifying aspect of us is our brains and technology. Our aggressive instincts combined with our intelligence will never cease to come up with better and deadlier ways to warp reality in our own Image, and to torture and exterminate the enemy, and such is probably seen as incomprehensible Lovecraftian Magic to lower species (we ARE Cthulhu!). We exterminate a lot of species like the Dodo simply by uncaring accident (which is probably why we are thriving 'during' an extinction event [for now at least]). What we can come up with scares the shit out of ourselves even. Think Nuclear Weapons and M.A.D. for example.

#

So: human-driven climate change (if it's real): pffftt!

We'll survive it, and we'll survive it goin' forward, not backward; we'll survive by essentially beatin' earth's ass, not catering to it; we'll survive through being competive, surly, mean-spirited dicks, not by way of huggin' nature and each other.

The main thing to me is global warming is being tied to just a few years which is too short for me to call a trend. And I have seen studies that contradict global warming.

I think you've fallen victim to a study in an open-access journal that is not peer-reviewed, where anyone can pay to publish something.

There's a certain type of people, more popular online, who go to people like Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro or Stephen Crowder and hear what they have to say about climate change just because they agree with them on other things. Not saying you fit into this category specifically, and that isn't to diss on these conservative commentators in their respective field, but there's probably a reason why the vast majority of people telling you that humans have no contribution to global warming aren't scientists themselves.

In reality, there is just no contention in the scientific community. Human contribution to climate change is as much scientific consensus as the theory of evolution, or the geological age of the earth. The only times you will ever see a poll showing a majority non-belief from scientists, are things like the OISM petition or the polls of David Legates, a young earth creationist who only allows the opinions of those he knows in his own circle.

It's possible Phil is as you describe ("a certain type of people"), but mebbe he's just not particularly moved by the 'authority of the majority', has looked at the 'solid science' and found it lacking.

It's possible Phil is as you describe ("a certain type of people"), but mebbe he's just not particularly moved by the 'authority of the majority', has looked at the 'solid science' and found it lacking.

Is he really capable of doing that? I don't mean that in my usual sense when discussing that man's unimpressive capabilities, I don't think any of us here is in a position to evaluate the actual science of the matter.

PhilX is not able to devise his own instruments to measure fluctuations in the thermal output of the sun, so for measurements of that important factor he is as dependent on Nasa and the likes as everyone else is.

He did not devise the formulas that describe the manner in which carbon dioxide and methane prevent infra-red radiation from escaping the atmosphere. So he relies on experts for that knowledge - or he pretends it isn't true, or important, if he doesn't like their information.

PhilX has probably not spent a century and a half or so measuring the temperature of the oceans and the skies at many positions hourly in order to collect vast ledgers of climate data. He relies on experts who spend their careers doing that sort of thing for him, as does everybody else.

Nor, I suspect, has PhilX ever dug ice cores from Greenland and measured little bubbles of ancient air to see what levels of carbon they contain, certainly he hasn't compared them to fossilised tree rings and the seeds contained in sediment of lake beds that dried up millions of years ago to guage long term climate and atmospheric chemistry relationships.

It would be odd if PhilX was really up to these tasks, given that the great achievement that he keeps boasting about is that he sold a lot of cable tv subscriptions one time and somebody was jealous or something.

So in what way would anything that is within PhilX's possible set of available talents equip him to look at the 'solid science' and assess it in any way? It isn't tyranny that makes scientists more trustworthy than Phil on subjects such as the retention of heat by a planet with atmosphere composed of x parts per billion of a specific compound. It's just a fact of life that they have put in the time and effort to learn how to measure these things, and he is a sales guy with no relevant skills.

The other night I watched Star Trek: TNG and in the holodeck program were sitting Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. I don't think Newton and Einstein hold PhDs although they are commonly referred to as scientists (myself? I have an AS in chemistry but I don't call myself a scientist).

I've read there are supposed to be 31,000 global scientists. The only thing I'm sure of is science is fluid and I have seen reports casting doubt on global warming so I wanted to check it out.